


four times jamie dreamt about dani and one time it wasn't a dream

by closertoheavenn



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, THAT HAND, a character study of jamie after dani went into the lake basically, basically a word vomit about tHE HAND ON JAMIE'S SHOULDER, god i have so many FEELINGS about these two, i guess lol, omg it haunts me, so i wrote about it :), this does have quite a few heavy references towards depression i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26995153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/closertoheavenn/pseuds/closertoheavenn
Summary: A cook, a ghost housekeeper, a gardener and an au pair once lived together in a haunted house. It sounds like the beginning of a very bad joke.//or: four times Jamie dreamt about Dani and one time it wasn't a dream.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 27
Kudos: 365





	1. the first, second, third and fourth time

**i.**

Jamie has nightmares every night, the first few months after losing the love of her life.

Jamie has nightmares about Dani drowning underwater, about drowning herself, about Viola being the one pulling Dani down in the water, her lithe, long fingers choking her, forcing her into the dark water, about Dani choking herself to death. She has nightmares where she stands in front of Bly Manor and sees Dani smirking back, eyes dark and bloody, something Jamie’s unable to get rid of, no matter how hard she tries. 

Sometimes, she has a hard time differentiating her dreams from her memories.

(Sadness is a fickle thing).

//

There are no lakes in her dreams. There is always water, yet never any lakes. Thunder, lightning, rain, a bathtub filled to the rim, a rusty shower, oceans stretching out endlessly before her, but no lakes. 

Jamie doesn’t have the strength to figure out what that means. 

(Jamie is certain that it must mean _something_ ).

//

Jamie wakes up screaming often, a sound piercing through the silence of her _(their, still)_ apartment.

She makes herself tea, sits on the couch and cries until she’s out of tears.

Jamie has once read someone that drowning takes approximately seven minutes, yet you’re only conscious for three minutes. She marvels about how lovely that would be, losing your conscience after merely _three_ minutes.

She’s at the bottom of a lake. Drowning. In dreams, memories. In reality, too.

(Sometimes, she thinks she’s already dead. She is victim to the part of her that had lost the love of her life, the part of her that loves a woman that is no longer there anymore, victim to the part of her that is the most inherently mortal a human can be.)

//

**ii.**

A cook, a ghost housekeeper, a gardener and an au pair once lived together in a haunted house. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.

A cook and a gardener start having dinner once a week. It still sounds like a bad joke, but at least there aren’t any ghosts in this version.

_(Aren’t there?)_

Jamie and Owen have dinner in his restaurant, together. It starts seven months after Dani has left (and it never ends.)

They talk about everything, without any repercussions, taboos or forbidden subjects. 

It’s nice in a way that nothing else in Jamie’s life is.

//

Her dreams are different, now. Her nightmares have changed into dreams where she remembers Dani, all her love, all her warmth, soaking in the finiteness of it all.

The line between dreams and memories blurs even more.

Here’s the thing: Dani was (is!) so _good_. She is such an inherently kind, good person and her love is so bloody vivid. Jamie wasn’t prepared for a love that was so incredibly whole, so pure, as reliable and as warm as the sun. _The daily rising of love._

Dani is the kindest thing that ever happened to Jamie. 

And the dreams are all of that, and more. She dreams of the most random memories together, which somehow makes it only worse: the time they had a bubble soap fight in the kitchen that ended up being a three hour long make out session on the dining room table, the time Jamie purposely jumped into a puddle to get Dani wet and started a puddle-jumping war, the time they snuck into a MacDonald’s after hours to play on the play place, the time she tried to cook a romantic dinner for Dani, but burning everything cause they were to busy making out, so they just ate mac and cheese and watched shite rom coms the entire evening, the time they took a vanilla-lavender bath together, Dani sitting between Jamie’s legs, back turned towards her, Jamie running a soft loofah over Dani’s tense shoulders, peppering her neck with soothing kisses.

She never dreams of the milestones of their relationship – their first date, their first “I love you”, their first shared house, their engagement.

It’s the little, mundane things, that haunt her in her dreams.

She only dreamed about the little things, for in the end, they were the big things, she realises in hindsight.

//

Some bloke proposes to his girlfriend in Owen’s restaurant, almost two years after Dani left.

Jamie congratulates the newly engaged with a little toast.

“Till death do us part, they say,” she tells the boy, choking on her tongue, on her words. She is a little drunk and not particularly happy, which can be quite a dangerous combination. “But death shouldn’t make you bitter. A life without her should.”

Thankfully, Owen comes to the rescue. A friend in need is a friend indeed, or something.

“The only bitterness you need today is the taste of red wine and dark chocolate,” Owen tells her, steadying her shoulders, his eyes gentle and understanding.

Jamie can only nod and smile faintly, as Owen leads her to a small table and gives her dessert in the form of a piece of chocolate cake. From the glimpse of her eye, Jamie can see the engagement ring the girl is wearing. It is silver, with a little diamond in the form of a rose on top. It’s absolutely beautiful.

She wonders what Dani would think of it.

**iii.**

The dreams become less frequent as the years pass by.

The darkness of the night used to scare the living shite out of her, used to remind her of Dani in the worst way possible, drowning, choking, screaming, but over the years, Jamie has grown rather fond of the darkness. She has found a strange, rare form of support in the stars and moon that surround her at night.

(It’s comforting to know that Dani is with her in the dark – she is with her in the darkness. Dark like the bottom of a lake, dark like the interior of Bly Manor, dark like a hazy, long-forgotten memory).

//

The dreams and nightmares go fuzzy in her head, turning them indistinct until she can barely remember the specific details –

Time obscures, slowly but surely.

//

The fifth anniversary of Dani’s sacrifice is the first one Jamie doesn’t cry. 

She should have cried, she thinks. But she doesn’t. Tears just don’t come. 

She figures it’s because someone cries when they are sad, but Jamie doesn’t feel sad anymore. She doesn’t feel anything, actually. She just feels tired. Really, really tired. 

(There are times when she wants to cut open her blouse and put a fucking knife in her chest to feel _something_ ).

//

Jamie’s neighbours ask her to babysit their seven-year-old daughter once. A polite “no” is already on the tip of her tongue, until she sees their child: long, dark brown hair, big eyes and fluttering eyelashes.

The thought of Flora wakes something in Jamie that is too complex to be described by a pretty metaphor.

She immediately says yes.

//

The girl is called Emily and she is the most annoying little brat Jamie has ever met.

(But Gosh, she wouldn’t trade her for the world.)

“You look sad,” Emily says, one rainy afternoon, colouring a drawing for her mother. “Your eyes look sad. Are you always sad?”

Jesus, kid, if sadness was a lake, I’d drown in it, Jamie thinks. But she can’t say that, so she says: “Always is a very long time, Em.”

Emily shakes her head. “You didn’t answer my question.”

A short silence falls.

“My sadness is a bit like a lake, Em,” Jamie decides, eventually. It’s not an explanation, not by far, but at least it’s something. 

It’s all she has to offer, so it sort of has to be enough.

(Sweet and dark, a lake).

(Cold, sometimes, too).

Emily smiles. A seven-year-old brain can’t comprehend the sadness Jamie carries with her yet. “I love lakes,” she smiles.

Jamie nods, genuinely laughing a little bit for the first time in weeks. “Me too, little one,” she decides. “Me too.”

**iv.**

Hurt changes, over a long period of time, into bittersweet acceptance.

If I can’t have love, at least let me have this, Jamie asks the universe.

(It sounds simpler than it is. Sadness is a fickle thing, still, you see? Real, proper sadness is something cruel, something that will beg mercilessly with his fists and tears your insides apart until it got what it craves).

But the universe accepts. You've been through enough, it answers. And _yes_ , she has been through e - fucking - nough, thank you very much.

There is some form of peace in her, now, finally.

Jamie doesn’t feel free, liberated and doesn’t have any less sorrow than she did before, but she does feel different. These days, she sleeps merely to see the sunrise in the morning. 

Dani was a reality. Then a dream. Now a memory.

Memories never die.

And if they do, against all odds, Jamie thinks she has reached a point where she can live with that too.

//

She always goes to sleep with a full bathtub, a sink filled until the rim and with the door open, ever so slightly.

Sleep comes more easily to her now than it has done in years.

And only for a lingering second, when she’s on the verge between being awake and asleep, in something caught between a dream and reality, Jamie swears she sometimes finds a ghost of the girl she fell in love with so many years ago.

(Eventually, Dani will find her again).

(She always does).


	2. the fifth time

**v.**

Here’s the thing: you can’t summon a ghost.

A ghost has to come unbidden, uncalled for, almost undesired, even; if you want it, it can’t haunt you.

//

Grief is one of the strangest riddles in the world, Jamie marvels.

It’s absurd, really, how she is perfectly able to look at pictures of Dani without even the slightest throbbing in her heart or how she can tell their entire love story without batting an eye, but how she still has to fill up the tub every bloody night or how her hands still don’t know how to be hands after all these years without touching Dani.

She used to build dreams around Dani. She doesn’t do that very often anymore. She thinks about her, instead. Her days are empty now, but full of sunlight.

She’s not okay, but she’s okay with not being okay.

(On some of those days, empty but full of sunlight, Jamie doesn’t know if that is the cruelest weapon life forced upon her or the kindest thing that has ever happened to her.)

(On some other days, Jamie thinks grief has less to do with the agonizing, aching pain that burns you from within and more to do with phantom pain, pain for a _ghost_ , the sort of pain you feel for the absence of pain).

(She’s not peaceful, exactly. She is, however, content).

(Contentment, as it turns out, is even more of a fickle thing than sadness).

//

Jamie often thinks about a poem she read once: _“The fear: that nothing survives. The greater fear: that something does.”_

(She doesn’t know why she thinks about it often, but somehow she does know that it hurts more than she thought it would).

//

The invitation to the wedding comes unexpected, yet not unwanted.

Jamie has never been to a wedding before. She could have, she thinks, but she simply hasn’t.

(She tries to ignore the feeling of the cold metal ring around her finger – _choking her, suffocating her, cutting her in half)._

Jamie flies to America, wears the best two-piece to the rehearsal dinner and gifts Flora and her husband-to-be the biggest, most colourful bouquet of flowers she can afford.

(As Flora accepts the flowers, looking at her dark brown hair and into her bright eyes, Jamie half expects her to say, _“they’re perfectly splendid”._

She wonders if Flora remembers that she used to say that all the time as a child, when she still had her British accent.

Then, she wonders if that Flora was even real to begin with).

//

It’s the very first (and also the very last time, to be precise) Jamie tells Dani’s story, the night before the wedding. It takes her almost two hours and a lot (like, _a lot_ ) of booze, but she succeeds.

“It’s not a ghost story. It’s a love story,” Flora tells her, after the story is over. 

“It’s the same thing, really,” Jamie answers, and her voice doesn’t crack but it feels like it should.

(She wonders, as she looks at Flora leaving; have I just made you a promise? Or a threat?)

//

Jamie’s hotel room is cold and dark as she enters. Like a lake, for that matter, she muses.

(That thought is so visceral to her that it almost isn’t even a proper thought anymore, it’s just something she always carries with her: water is wet, Dani liked her tea with two sweets – no milk, even the smallest things are lakes now).

She undertakes her ritual, despite being in a hotel room and not at home: fills the bathtub and the sink, looks at her reflection, leaves the door open.

She has no true hope left, that Dani will ever come back. Telling their story gave her some weird, fucked up kind of closure, that she doesn't question.

Where there used to be belief, there is now solely the normalcy, the routine, the utter force of habit.

(Because there is simply nothing worse and nothing better than knowing how it ends.)

The second Jamie gets into the chair and closes her eyes, she falls asleep.

It’s strange, because she never dreams anymore, but tonight, she dreams there is a hand with a ring on her shoulder.

_(It isn’t a dream)._

//

When Jamie wakes, the hand is not on her shoulder anymore. It is, however, intertwined with her own in her lap.

Dani is sitting in the chair next to her, her hair grey-gold instead of blonde, wrinkles around her lips, visibly older and more mature, yet her eyes just as bright and _blue_ as Jamie remembers.

“Poppins, is that really you?” Jamie whispers, her voice hoarse. Tears are streaming down her face.

Dani smiles – a tired, nonetheless warm smile.

“Jamie, I’ve missed you,” she whispers softly, and Jamie falls in love for what it feels like the millionth time.

//

They make love, the entire reminder of the night.

(“As one does,” Dani laughs softly, stroking Jamie’s hair. “Not that I’m complaining.”

(“Me neither, love. I think we have more than a decade of orgasms to make up for,” Jamie jokes).

They kiss a lot, slow and soft, giggling and licking into each other's mouth.

“I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses,” Dani promises in her ear as she slides between Jamie’s legs, kissing her thighs, “I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” 

And she keeps her promise, because when she opens her mouth against Jamie, Jamie fucking _blossoms._

//

They go for a walk, then. They don’t really know what else to do, as foolish as it might sound. What exactly does one do when one resurrects?

They hold hands, and talk. The crisp air feels like a new beginning. The sunrise makes the world around them seem blurry and white. 

We can do everything right this time, Jamie thinks, looking at the love of her life looking at her. _We can do everything right this time._

(And they do).

//

Jamie learns that Dani still carries Viola within her, but she’s different now, tranquil, calm. She became Viola, Viola became her, made Dani strong and determent enough to drag her body out of the lake, put on warm clothes and walk home.

“So you… _tamed_ her?” Jamie asks, voice full of disbelief.

“That is one way of looking at it, I guess,” Dani laughs, and it’s so –

“I don’t know how else to explain it. She’s more of a guest, now, instead of an intruder.”

“And you did that?”

Dani laughs again and Jamie laughs too, and she kisses her and she thinks: how can one person embody so much goodness that she is able to make a ghost the gentle visitor of her body instead of the merciless demon she used to be?

“Blimey, Poppins,” Jaime says, “and I thought it was impossible for me to love you even more.”

(A lot of things are talked about on that walk, but more importantly, a lot of other things are left unspoken, yet not left unsaid.)

//

It’s a very surreal feeling, falling in love for the second time while you never fell out of love in the first place.

There are all kinds of love, but never the same love twice, F. Scott Fitzgerald said, but Jamie begs to differ. Their love is the exact same as before: they are still standing in the sunlight, together, sweet and warm, lazily melting into what’s around them as they take it all in, their bodies and minds liquid light.

//

Their life continues, as life does, and it’s pretty unremarkable.

(People might say that’s a bad thing, but Jamie has learned that doing absolutely nothing with Dani on a lazy Sunday afternoon is somehow worth _everything_.)

The first time Owen sees Dani, is, however, pretty remarkable (and kind of awkward, not gonna lie).

He catches them together in the shower, and their mind-blowing sex had to be cut short, rather unfortunately, because Owen falls down on the floor and looks like he has seen a ghost.

(Which, to be fair, he kind of does).

//

They get married a week after the Supreme Court legalizes gay marriage.

Owen is their maid of honor. No one bats an eye.

//

Their lives carry on, happier and more complete than ever before.

Dani has bad days, still. Some nights she is Jamie's sun, some nights her lake. 

Jamie has bad days, too, even after all these years, where she is terrified of going to sleep and Dani not waking up next to her in the morning, watching Dani’s face, Dani’s hair, Dani’s body the entire night, too afraid and too fragile to be broken again.

But every morning, Dani kisses Jamie on the lips, flutter light, makes her breakfast (with _awful_ tea) and reminds she will never, _ever_ leave again.

//

On an incredibly mundane Monday evening, when they are old and grey and tired, they go to sleep and don’t wake up in the morning. Miles finds them, holding hands, their rings shining in the early sunlight, sweet smiles on their faces.

Their funeral is small but graceful. There are not a lot of people, but the ones who are there, loved them deeply.

Owen places a moonflower in both of their caskets, that has nothing to do with grief and everything to do with love.

Their caskets get buried in the lake, next to one another, where they are finally peaceful, together, forevermore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not crying you're crying
> 
> fyi: the poem jamie thinks about a lot is from richard siken's "the language of birds", because i'm simply obsessed with it. and dani's promise is one of pablo neruda's most famous poems :)

**Author's Note:**

> soooo let me know what you think :) i'll be posting "the one time it wasn't a dream" soon i promise!


End file.
